Textbooks are now painting Christians and conservatives as racists and xenophobes.
***Article first published by 'The Daily Caller News Foundation' on April 17, 2018***
An AP U.S. History textbook slated for distribution in 2019 reportedly contains anti-Trump bias and says Christians and conservatives are racists and xenophobes.
Radio host Alex Clark of WNOW’s “The Joe and Alex Show” posted photos of the book and its contents on Twitter after publisher Pearson Education sent samples of the book to public schools to encourage school administrations to purchase it, according to Fox News. The textbook features sections on the Black Live Matter movement and the 2016 presidential elections in which author New York University Professor James Fraser portrays Christians, conservatives, and President Donald Trump supporters as bigots who fear non-white ethnicities.
— Alex On-Air (@yoalexrapz) April 13, 2018
“There are specific parts where it goes off the rails from a historical textbook toward an op-ed,” Minnesota Rosemount High School student Tarra Snyder told Fox News.
“It was really, really surprising to me. I really believe that learning should be objective and that students can make their own decisions based on what they’re able to learn in a classroom; and if the facts are skewed, then students aren’t able to make well-rounded decisions on what they believe.”
A section of the book, “The Angry Election of 2016,” describes Trump supporters as “mostly older, often rural or suburban, and overwhelmingly white.” It also calls Trump supporters from Hillary Clinton supporters’ perspective “people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country, discomfort with their candidate’s gender, and nostalgia for an earlier time in the nation’s history.”
Clinton supporters meanwhile “worried about the mental stability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought to the nation,” according to the book.
White Christians feared the increase of minority populations in the years after 2012, the author also claimed.
“Those who had long thought of the nation as a white and Christian country sometimes found it difficult to adjust,” the book reads.
As for Trump, Fraser ascribes not only anger to him but also “not-very-hidden racism” and “extremism.”
The textbook was “developed by an expert author and underwent rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity” and it was “designed to convey college-level information to high school students,” Pearson Education spokesperson Scott Overland told Fox News. The textbook “aims to promote debate and critical thinking by presenting multiple sides,” Overland also said.